Empower your customers

Citation

Loughlin, C. (2006), "Empower your customers", Sensor Review, Vol. 26 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.2006.08726daa.001

Empower your customers

Empower your customers

I was once sent a baseball cap by an engineer at Allen-Bradley because he appreciated a comment that I had made in an article that “machine vision is just another tool in the engineer's tool box, to be used as and when appropriate”. That was about 25 years ago and since then the “as and when” has become a lot more frequent.

Cognex alone boast over 300,000 systems installed, which is quite an achievement and certainly a big turnaround from the days when a salesman was doing well to chalk up one a month.

There are many contributing factors to this ramping up of the acceptance of machine vision. New software algorithms and brute force computing power have certainly had their impact, but by far the biggest change is that machine vision is now easy to use. All engineers are now at home with a PC (otherwise they are probably at home without a PC!) and are well able, with a bit of training, to set up and run a vision inspection operation.

For the majority of applications it is no longer necessary for the machine vision supplier or systems integrator to develop special code. The libraries are all there and algorithms are as easy to select as a new typeface on your word processor. Lighting can still be something of a black art, but at least this is recognised and so the engineer is open to the idea that it is well worth experimenting with different lighting arrangements.

It is this empowerment of the end-user that has made the biggest difference to the rate of adoption and application of machine vision.

So what else could benefit from the same approach? Many companies make a good proportion of their income and an even greater proportion of their profit from service contracts and the sale of replacement parts. This is all part of the business plan and is an established way of the world. Some products, such as inkjet printers, are virtually given away and the manufacturer relies on income from expensive inkjet cartridges to balance the books.

The problem with this strategy in an engineering environment is that it can actually actively discourage the manufacturer from making their systems as reliable as possible and it also discourages them from providing their customers with the necessary information so they can fix any problems themselves.

I am a firm believer in giving customers the information they need so that they can help themselves and designing systems so that they are easy to maintain. The very act of doing this usually ensures that less maintenance is required and certainly makes everyone's jobs a lot easier.

Companies may well disagree with the above and point out such things as safety implications, but they should ask themselves this question – if two companies supply similar systems and one insists on service contracts and the other trains the user in maintenance, then which one will get the contract and inspire the customer with confidence?

Clive Loughlin